Religious Leaders Network for Choice has asked Members of Parliament to consider tabling and passing the termination of pregnancy bill during the current sitting of Parliament.
The Network’s Chairperson Reverend Father Martin Bob Kalimbe said the current law on abortion is very restrictive and it doesn’t accommodate that a woman can have safe abortion.
“We have a law on abortion but this law says a woman can procure safe abortion if that woman’s life is at risk.
“The current bill provides three grounds. Suppose if a woman has got pregnant through incest or maybe rape or in case of malformation in the embryo, the woman can be allowed to seek or procure abortion,” said Kalimbe.
He added that this is a proposed bill which if passed into law, will save a certain group of women who should be given second chance rather than condemning them to early preventable death.
Kalimbe then said that it’s a concern that Malawi Members of Parliament are not ready to deliberate the bill.
He further said that as religious leaders, they are sensitizing members of the public because some Members of Parliament claim that this bill cannot be tabled because it is not coming from community members.
“So we are trying to sensitize members of the community so that they should also call for their members of Parliament to discuss the issue in Parliament,” explained Kalimbe.
Kalimbe further made a call to religious mother bodies that were present in the special law commission which made the recommendations of the proposed bill to rise above denominationalism and allow parliamentarians to deliberate and pass the bill into law without undue interference considering the fact that it’s their own bill which they took part to draft through the report they endorsed in 2016.
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